


Backcountry Break

by MaverickSawyer



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-03-31 23:23:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3997087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickSawyer/pseuds/MaverickSawyer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako and Raleigh have taken some time to escape from the rest of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backcountry Break

_Somewhere in the Sierra Nevada Mountains_

 

Mako and Raleigh lay in their tent as the rain fell down through the grove of pine trees around their campsite. The staccato _tap_ s of the drops hitting the rain fly were the loudest sounds, but there was a background sound that Mako couldn’t quite put a word to. _Almost a rushing sound… It’s nice._

Next to her, Raleigh turned the page of his book. “Hey, Mako?”

“Mmm?” Mako opened her eyes to look at her copilot/boyfriend.

“What’s your take on reincarnation?”

Mako blinked for a moment, utterly confused. “Where’d THAT come from?”

Raleigh held up the book so that Mako could see the cover. “Something that comes up in this story. One of the key tenets of it, actually.” He shrugged. “It’s an interesting concept.”

Mako’s gaze grew distant as she thought about the idea. “I’ve wondered about it. There was just some sort of… I don’t know, a-”

The tent fabric lit up as a bolt of lightning leapt down from the clouds to strike the ground below. Mako’s eyes narrowed against the harsh blue-white light. Raleigh, however…

“One… two… three… four… fiv-”

“Just under a mile.” Raleigh eased away from the tent walls a little more. “Anyways, you were saying?”

Mako rolled onto her back. “When we met, on the helicopter pads at Hong Kong… Did you get the feeling that, somewhere, or perhaps some _when_ , we’d met before?”

“We did. Anchorage.”

“No, not just passing in the halls… Like this. Us, together.”

Raleigh grew quiet for a while, and Mako let him think. She listened to the rain coming down, trying to come up with a word to describe the sound of it.

Finally, Raleigh spoke up again. “I didn’t think much of it at the time, but yeah… There was this odd sense of ‘Where have I seen you before? Where have we met? How do I know you?’”

“Mmmm…”

“Why do you think that happens?”

“I’m an engineer, Raleigh. I have no answers for these kinds of things.” She grabbed her jacket, rolled it into a ball and stuffed it under her head. “Maybe Tendo would know. He’s religious, right?”

“Roman Catholic. No reincarnation there.”

“Mmmm…”

Another flash of lightning brightened the tent. Mako started to count off the seconds. “One… two… three…”

_CRACKooom…_

“Getting closer.”

Raleigh playfully took a swipe at Mako. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

“You’re welcome, Lieutenant Sarcasm.”

Raleigh groaned at Mako’s snappy comeback. “Walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

“Yes you did.”

Raleigh rolled onto his back. “So… About reincarnation…”

“If someone can find a way to prove it, I’ll believe it.”

“Mmmm…”

“Otherwise, it’s just a hypothesis that has no way of being proved or disproved.”

Raleigh opened his mouth to reply, but Mako’s hair began to stand on end. “Uhhh, Mako?”

Mako’s eyes widened. “Oh… cra-”

_WHAM!_

Mako and Raleigh clamped their hands over their ears by force of instinct, but they were far too late to block out the shockwave from the nearby lightning bolt. The tent rattled around them for a few seconds, then everything grew quiet.

“… The hell?”

Mako bit her thumb, then eased open the rain fly to peek out of the tent. “Wow. Took out that tree over there.”

Raleigh crawled over and looked over Mako’s shoulder. “Uhm… wasn’t that the tree that the through hiker over there hung his food in?”

“Yeah…”

As if on cue, a man came racing from another part of the grove, swearing. “MY FOOD!”

The two Rangers looked at each other, thinking the same thing. “Should we…?” “Yeah. We’ve got enough…”

Mako smiled and shouted to the despondent hiker. “Sir! How far do you still have to go to get to your next cache?”

“Just tomorrow.”

“Going to Road’s End?”

“Yeah! Why?”

“We’re headed that way too! We’ve got some food to spare if you want it!”

“Oh, you guys are lifesavers!”

Raleigh shook his head. “He has no idea…”

Mako chuckled and pulled on a jacket. “Well, thankfully the storm is petering out. And I’m hungry. You?”

“Yup. Want me to get it…?”

“Go.”

Raleigh scooped up the nesting cook kit and pulled the pot off the outside of the stack and headed down to the creek, leaving Mako alone for a moment. She leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree, listening to the sounds of the storm passing. The now rapidly receding rumble of thunder, the faint dripping of water falling from the trees, the rush of the wind through the pines and the rocks… Mako smiled. _This was worth the time and effort. The juggling of our schedules, slipping away from the paparazzi, just… getting off the grid. Totally worth it._


End file.
